In the last post I asked you to write down the five most important things to you in life.

I wrote down the following:

Family
Friends
Security
Wisdom
Having Fun

We often go through life without spending much time thinking about the things on which we place value.   We may be setting ourselves up for major disappointment because many of those things are destined to be swept up by the tornado of life.

There is only one constant in life – change. If we attach our happiness to anything susceptible to change, it will at some point be swept away from us. Change will occur – It’s just a matter of time.

However, if we attach our happiness to the process of life (rather than the things of life), what we value will never be swept away by the tornado of life because they become the tornado of life. It’s placing value on experiences rather than things and concepts. Things and concepts come and go, experiences, however, become us. They are the things of which we are made.

So of the things I listed above, every one of them will at some point be swept away from me. But if I redefine those five things as the process they represent, they will never be taken from me. My new five now become:

Experiencing life (teaching, learning and growing) with my family
Spending time with people I enjoy
Working hard no matter what I do
Seeking to learn and grow from every experience
Seeking joy and understanding in both the ups and downs

It is obviously much easier said than done. It takes work and rework, but our job in life is to create us. And the first step in doing so is re-defining what is important to us.

Timothy Velner is a husband, father, attorney and author living in Minneapolis. You can follow his daily blog – a series of discussions between the worry-self and the present-self at – thespiritualgym.me